Present-Day Galley: Practice, Institution, Institute

The author interprets present-day gallery as a social formation engaged in storage, development and accumulation of cultural capital. On the one hand, it is a financial mechanism that increases the economic value of artworks. On the other, it acts as a particular institution that transforms material items into cultural capital. In the author's view, the gallery comprises a host of practices unified by a kind of framework of regularities and rules. Not having completed the process of institualization yet, the present-day gallery expresses the dynamics of cultural processes actualizing works of art and uniting viewers and authors in its space.